Mechanical property of body-thoroughly enhanced austenitic stainless steel and high-Mn steel by industry-applicable 3-axis stress-released impact
As two important austenitic steels, the austenitic stainless steel (SS) and austenitic high-Mn steel have been seeking a decent yield strength to match their versatile exceptional advantages. However, the traditional, severe, and high-strain-rate plastic deformation techniques currently used to strengthen the austenitic steels, are limited by their ability to produce ultrastrong steel, bulk sized steel, and the fracturing risk they pose to the steel, respectively. In this research, we propose an industry-applicable 3-axis stress-released impact process, which addresses the challenges facing the current techniques and successfully prepares the body-thorough ultrastrong and ductile austenitic steels without fracturing risk. The bulk 316L SS treated by this process achieves a to date highest yield strength (YS) of 1552 MPa and an ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of 1640 MPa, and a reasonable elongation to fracture (El) of 5.2%. More appealing tensile property, with the YS, UTS and El becoming 1274 MPa, 1398 MPa and 10.3%, respectively, is achieved by the 316L SS after we make an optimization on this novel process. The bulk Fe-20Mn-0.88C steel treated by this process achieves a YS of 735 MPa, a UTS of 1054 MPa, and an El of 40.2%, which is the ever best strength and ductility synergy achieved by this steel by a simple process. The high strengths of the austenitic steels are mainly attributed to the extraordinary grain-refining ability of this novel process, and the elements segregation induced by the annealing treatment in the SS contributes extra strengthening effects. The great ductilities of the austenitic steels are attributed to the high volume of twins produced by this novel process. The high-Mn steel experiencing the uniaxial impact plus annealing treatment displays severe PLC effect. By examining the structures and the concentrations of C-Mn atom pair at different stages of an individual serration, we prove that the PLC effect is not caused by the direct interaction between the dislocations and the C atoms, as the previous models proposed. Instead, it is caused by two separate processes involving the returning of the C atoms from the tetrahedral sites to the octahedral sites, and the accumulation of the depleted dislocations.
Austenitic stainless steel, Austenitic high-Mn steel, 3-axis stress-released impact, high strength and high ductility, strengthening mechanism, PLC effect.
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